God Of War
Gordon Chan
The story: General Qi Jiguang (Vincent Zhao) is tasked to deal with the scourge of pirates menacing coastal China during the Ming dynasty in the 1500s. One group of invaders has even taken over Cengang in Zhejiang province. It turns out that masterful Japanese strategist Kumasawa (Kurata Yasuaki) is pulling the strings behind these attacks. He and Gen Qi engage in a battle of tactics as he launches attacks on three different fronts.

Given that Hollywood blockbuster Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge is now showing, God Of War could easily be dismissed as “the other pirate movie”. That would be a pity, for there is quite a bit to treasure here.
At its helm is Hong Kong director Gordon Chan, who can be hit-or-miss, responsible for helming the overly CGI-heavy fantasy flick Mural (2011) as well as hit Stephen Chow comedy Royal Tramp (1992). Here, he delivers layered storytelling, gripping battle sequences and an even more exciting battle of wits between Qi and Kumasawa.
Things are more complicated than they appear to be at first glance. The pirates are a front for Japanese samurai keen on making money for military adventures back home; Qi has a reputation for being unbeatable, but the truth has been bent for the sake of propaganda; and Zhejiang governor Hu (Wang Ban) – Qi’s superior – could be corrupt or merely practical.
The characters are treated with some care.
Zhao delivers a convincing performance as Qi, who is heroic without being bland. For one thing, the general occasionally submits to his wife, a strong-willed woman who is capable of taking up arms when enemies attack. Chinese actress Wan Qian, from 2014’s Taiwanese drama Paradise In Service, acquits herself superbly in the role.
Unusually, the Japanese villains here are not caricatures – Yasuaki brings a certain dignity and pathos to wily strategist Kumasawa, who has to contend with an impatient and rash young master (Koide Keisuke).
God Of War’s engaging storytelling is a pleasant surprise, given that there are four names credited for its screenplay: Xiong Zhaozheng, Maria Wong, Frankie Tam and Wu Mengzhang. Happily, the proverbial broth is not spoilt by the many cooks.
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Lucky Boy
Boris Boo
The story: Lin Yu (Wang Weiliang) seems destined to always be No. 2 in whatever he does, coming up just short every single time. When he meets Qingqing (Venus Wong) as a little boy, he carries a torch for her that burns for many years even as they are kept apart by circumstances and the other men in her life.

Wang Weiliang broke out as Ah Beng soldier Lobang in the national service-themed ensemble Ah Boys To Men films (2012-2015) with his swagger and assured screen presence.
He gets the chance to be the leading man here but, unfortunately, in a role that calls for him to be mousy and timid most of the time.
Even worse: While the idea is for this to be an epic romance in the vein of Taiwanese hits You Are The Apple Of My Eye (2011) and Our Times (2015), the vibe between him and pretty but bland Hong Kong actress Venus Wong (King Of Mahjong, 2015) is more amicable than passionate.
The will-they-or-won’t-they premise drags out for far too long.
The movie could have done with a much-needed trim, especially the jarring jump from light-hearted comedy romance to melodrama in a teary rooftop scene between Lin and his father (Chew Chor Meng).
The attempt to add some heft by incorporating real-life events from the Hotel New World collapse in 1986 to the Sars outbreak in 2003 does not really work.
These momentous episodes are reduced to the equivalent of movie wallpaper populated by a cast stuck in underwritten roles, including local 1980s television star Chen Xiuhuan as Lin’s over-protective mother.
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18
Z-Chen Chang
Malaysian singer Z-Chen Chang’s last studio album of original material, In Love With... (2011), still lingers on my mind with his moving take on the ballads Invaluable Advice and Met Too Soon, both of which were penned by Percy Phang.
Bruises, the opening track from the new album, also composed by the Johor Baru-born, Taiwan-educated Phang, is not quite as effective. Listen instead to the bruising emotions of Walk Away, composed by Zheng Yujie, who was also behind the title track of Rainie Yang’s 2016 album Traces Of Time In Love: “I walk away, carve my memories into a memorial/I walk away, break free of these surging tears.”
The following Fight For Love, music and lyrics by Phang, offers a welcome change of pace and a more pro-active stance: “If you really love someone, you will fight for love.”
On the whole, though, 18 is less memorable than his earlier effort. Maybe Chang needs to fight for more distinctive material.
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29+1 (PG)
Kearen Pang
The story: Calorie-counting and vitamin-popping executive Christy Lam (Chrissie Chau) gets a promotion at work, but she starts to question what she wants in life on the eve of her 30th birthday. When she is forced to move from her apartment, she ends up in the charmingly and whimsically decorated home of Wong Tin Lok (Joyce Cheng), who turns out to share the same birth date and is on her dream vacation to Paris.

Rat-race fatigue is not exactly new or unusual and Christy’s story – which writer-director Kearen Pang first staged as a one-woman play in 2005 – feels a little too familiar to be revelatory.
Perhaps a stronger actress would have made the role more sympathetic. Chau, who remains better known for her pictorial books than acting chops, is adequate here, but not quite compelling enough.
Things get more interesting with the entry of Tin Lok.
Carefree and cheerful, the unambitious record store assistant is the polar opposite of Christy.
Cheng is very good, admittedly in a role that is easier to like. There is a joy and sweetness to her performance that lights up the screen and there is nice rapport between her and Babyjohn Choi, who plays Tin Lok’s best friend.
Pang draws parallels between the lives of the two women and, intriguingly, Christy starts to imagine herself as Tin Lok. It feels a little jarring here because Chau and Cheng are physically so different.
One cannot help but think that this conceit would have worked better in the one-woman play, when Pang slipped in and out of both roles.
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In the recent Chinese suspense thriller The Mysterious Family, a mother was confronting her daughter’s rapist in an emotionally charged scene, when the subtitles suddenly took centre stage and wrested attention away from what was happening onscreen.
“You have the nuts to do it, why not have the balls to admit it?”
In Mandarin, the line went: “Ni you zhong zuo, wei shen me mei zhong cheng ren?” A simpler and more effective translation could have been: “You had the guts to do it, why don’t you have the guts to admit it?”
Mixing nuts and balls is clearly a case of a subtitler gone rogue.
Subtitles for a movie should be like that old adage about children – seen but not heard, or draw attention to themselves.
They play an important role in broadening the audience for a work, but they should be subservient to the movie.
At least in The Mysterious Family, there was effort expended on the subtitles, misguided though that line was.
That cannot be said for the awful errors in other films.
In the local horror comedy, The Ghosts Must Be Crazy (2011), a character is described as a “sicklish chicken”. A spellcheck would have revealed that there is no such word as “sicklish”.
The Korean drama, Natali (2011), billed as the first erotic movie shown here in 3D, thrust ungrammatical Mandarin and English subtitles in the audience’s faces rather than sexy shenanigans.
And the Chinese adventure flick, For A Few Bullets (2016), undermined the charms of its rakish leading man Lin Gengxin with subtitles that were rife with errors, including this: “Some warlords forces used violent mechanic to destroying the tomb.”
These films have a production budget, but no one thought it was worth spending some money to get right something as basic as the subtitles.
I am far more forgiving when it comes to fansubs – these are subtitles done by fans for which they are not paid. Even when the English is laboured – as though chunks of dialogue had been dumped into the input column of Google Translate and the results simply copied and pasted from the output column – I am thankful.
After all, without their labour of love, I would not have access to the likes of Thai-language television dramas.
The hard work of these fans is sometimes recognised by the actors themselves and getting that acknowledgement by one’s idols must be such a thrill for them.
On the Facebook page for the Thai drama, Part Time The Series – about university students who work to make ends meet – there is a photo of lead actor Luangsodsai Anupart (also known as Ngern) holding up a handwritten thank-you sign to the subtitles team for the show.
Once in a while, one gets reminded that these amateur subtitlers have lives outside of their time-consuming hobby.
There was a plea – in subtitles in an episode I watched – for viewers not to hound them for new, captioned episodes as they were having exams and that they would get to it when they had the time.
In another show, the subtitler was so involved with the drama that he berated a character for his behaviour in comments generously sprinkled with exclamation marks.
It was like a special DVD running-commentary bonus feature – except that this could not be turned off.
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Love Off The Cuff
Pang Ho Cheung
The story: In this sequel to Love In A Puff (2010) and Love In The Buff (2012), Jimmy (Shawn Yue) and Cherie (Miriam Yeung) are living together happily. But this state of affairs gets shaken up by the appearance of Jimmy’s “godmother” (Jiang Mengjie), a childhood friend who asks a big favour of him, and also by Cherie’s father (Paul Chun) getting remarried to a younger woman.

Hello again, old friends.
Moviegoers have watched Jimmy and Cherie banter, bicker and fall in and out of love. Five years after their last big-screen outing, it is a pleasure watching them go at it again.
There is quite a bit of fan service here, from the way Cuff opens with a seemingly unrelated story – similar to the earlier two films – to all the references to events that took place previously, such as Cherie’s supposed fling with actor Ekin Cheng, who played himself in part two.
Credit again goes to director and co-writer Pang Ho Cheung for crafting funny and incisive dialogue that makes the characters come alive, whether they are chatting about childhood television memories or Cherie discussing with a friend the problem of white pubic hair.
The characters are lived-in and their situations feel intimately real.
In a way, Jimmy and Cherie keep circling around the same issues: She thinks he is too immature, he does not understand why she makes a big deal of things.
Despite the best of intentions, they do not solve a problem once and for all.
It comes back in different guises in an ongoing relationship and they keep having to work through it.
Still, each time, the characters learn a little more about each other and keep you rooting for them.
In a nice touch, they get good advice from the unlikeliest of people and that seems to be a reflection of the film’s sweet-naturedness – even minor characters are treated with affection.
Yue and Yeung slip so easily into their roles that it is easy to mistake them for Jimmy and Cherie. But make no mistake, this is unaffected acting at its best. (For comparison, see Yue’s contrasting performance in 2016’s Mad World, a moving drama about mental illness.)
Whereas the obstacles in the second instalment seemed too obvious – Jimmy and Cherie were paired with people they were clearly not meant to be with – this time around, they strike closer to home as Cherie faces her deep- rooted fear of abandonment.
The “godmother” subplot is more of a stretch, but it does nudge the couple to think about marriage and children.
At its core, the Jimmy and Cherie series is a traditionally minded romance, one that is believably contemporary and done well with plenty of heart.
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Death's End
Liu Cixin
Death’s End is a spectacular conclusion to the acclaimed Chinese sci-fi trilogy, Remembrance Of Earth’s Past, by Liu Cixin.
There have been instances where finales have been disappointments after a long and compelling build-up. Not in this case. All the pieces come together and Death’s End is the appropriate culmination to an incredibly inventive and brilliantly imaginative series.
In Death’s End, the aliens from Trisolaris are living in peaceful co-existence with Earth. The Trisolarans were first introduced in the first book, The Three-Body Problem (published in English in 2014). There, the peculiarities of their world, which had three suns, were sketched out.
In the next instalment, The Dark Forest (published in English in 2015), they were charging towards Earth bent on destruction.
In Death’s End, the apparent peace both races enjoy lulls Earth into a false sense of security. But the death of a key character from book two sets in motion a chain of events that leaves humanity in crisis and facing the prospect of colonisation.
The sheer scope of this novel is astounding. In terms of timeline, it stretches from the present era to 17 billion years from the beginning of time. The story takes place on Earth and in the furthest reaches of space.
Such an expanse of time and space is daunting, but Liu gives us a single protagonist to guide us through it all.
New character Chinese aerospace engineer Cheng Xin is the heart of this epic tale as she hops from era to era, barely ageing, thanks to the wonders of hibernation technology.
A decision she makes plunges Earth into peril and the guilt almost crushes her, but she also turns out to be a pivotal figure whose choices the plot hinges on.
The twists and turns of her relationship with her long-time admirer Yun Tianming also have far-ranging consequences for the destiny of humanity.
The pacing is crisp, given the amount of ground the story covers. The reader is hooked on wanting to know the fates of Cheng and Yun, and, well, humankind.
Along the way, one is confronted with intriguing ideas about four-dimensional space and light-speed travel, abstract concepts which Liu makes relevant and urgent in the context of the story.
Impressively, Liu even works in three highly symbolic fairy tales in which clues for Earth’s survival are hidden in plain sight.
This is a rich work packed with ideas and one that continually manages to surprise the reader. On top of which, there are characters here that one grows to care for, people who are flawed and have needs and desires and yet must shoulder the burden of Earth’s survival.
It is the rare writer who can combine hardcore science, memorable characters and compelling storytelling together into such a satisfying whole.
For someone who has read sci-fi exclusively from a Western point of view, Liu’s Asia- and China-centric stories are a breath of fresh air, as is his ability to create strong and complex female characters, such as astrophysicist Ye Wenjie, who initiates contact with Trisolaris in The Three-Body Problem, and Cheng in Death’s End.
His achievement has been recognised with a prestigious Hugo Award for the first book, making him the first Asian to win that accolade. Come August, he could possibly be the first Asian to win that award twice.
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00:00
Yisa Yu
China’s Yisa Yu ventured into singer-songwriter territory on a handful of songs in her last album, Warm Water (2014).
So it is disappointing to find that she has completely relinquished composing and lyric-writing duties to others on her fifth album.
The good news is that her crystalline voice is as lovely as ever and there are a couple of noteworthy tracks here – opening number Revert flows as gently as water in a lazy brook, while Solitude Again is a dramatic ballad which Yu navigates with aplomb.
Elevator is a slice-of-life track that touches on the ups and downs of urban romances. With a light touch, Yu sings the observant lyrics by singer-songwriter Jin Wenqi: “A newly married couple has moved in on the seventh floor/We met yesterday in the lift/He didn’t hear her sighing.”
Maybe she could take things to the next level with a return to songwriting on her next record.
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Still Missing
Jia Jia
Taiwanese singer Jia Jia’s soulful voice is a thing of beauty.
She could have stuck to singing love ballads and everyone would be perfectly happy. Instead, she throws a curveball early on in this album with See Through, a number by singer-songwriter William Wei which juxtaposes a destructive relationship with a jaunty piano accompaniment. “If you want to hurt me, I won’t hide/A person who has given up can’t be hurt,” she sings.
Not to worry though, ballads are not completely missing from the album.
On the title track written by singer-songwriter Hush, Jia Jia conveys the tender pain of missing an old lover and the closeness they once shared: “More people have forgotten about you and worry about me instead/Forgetting that I am you.”
She also touches on familial love with an ode to her late mother on the album closer, She Was Beautiful.
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The Mysterious Family
Park Yu Hwan
The story: Miaomiao (Ariel Lin) is psychologically scarred after surviving a brutal attack by a stranger (Blue Lan). She refuses to speak to her family and shuts out the world by concentrating on training for a marathon. On Christmas Eve, her mother (Kara Hui) urges her to return home early for dinner with her father (Jiang Wu) and brother (Chen Xiao). Miaomiao later learns that a serial killer is on the loose that very day.

An unreliable protagonist. A looping narrative. A villain who keeps turning up like one’s worst nightmare. In more assured hands, these elements could have made for a compelling thriller.
But Korean writer-director Park Yu Hwan delivers only an overworked and overwrought movie that is more confusing than mysterious. (Do not mistake Park, who helmed the Chinese-language thriller Memento Mori (2016), for the idol actor Park Yoo Hwan, who starred in She Was Pretty (2015).)
Is there something diabolical going on? Are we being fed a steady stream of red herrings? And how trustworthy is Miaomiao anyway?
Unfortunately, the question becomes “Do we care?” at some point as the assembled cast, including China’s Jiang (To Live, 1994) and Hong Kong’s Hui (Rigor Mortis, 2013), is both underused and misused.
There is a point here about how one should not box oneself in after a traumatic episode, but it is buried late in the movie. And to get there, one has to sit through scenes of Lin howling in frustration – you might be tempted to do the same.
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Shock Wave
Herman Yau
The story: In an undercover mission, special agent Cheung (Andy Lau) takes down criminal Biao, but Biao’s mastermind elder brother Blast (Jiang Wu) escapes. Seven years later, Cheung has risen up the ranks in the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Bureau. Blast exacts his revenge by holding several hundred people hostage as he threatens to blow up Hong Kong’s vital traffic artery, the Cross-Harbour Tunnel.

The villain who likes to blow things up is called Blast.
That is an indication of how subtle things get in this, well, bombastic crime thriller from writer-director Herman Yau, whose varied body of work includes Cat III exploitation flick Ebola Syndrome (1996) and award-winning drama True Women For Sale (2008). The hero here is self-sacrificing and saintly, played with a certain smugness by Lau – which means that Cheung is not particularly interesting as the protagonist.
He gets a girlfriend early on, not so much to humanise him, but to have the damsel placed in distress.
Cheung is so macho that he does not even put on a protective suit while attempting to defuse a particular bomb because he reasons that the blast force would be too powerful anyway (by that logic, he might as well wear a T-shirt and shorts for his assignments).
The main event of the tunnel hostage situation is played out over an hour.
Yau draws out the tension as the clock ticks, Jiang chews up the scenery as Blast and the prospect of the tunnel getting destroyed looms.
On the whole, though, this is a workman-like and heavy-handed effort that is unlikely to knock anyone’s socks off.
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My Name
Jocie Guo
Jocie Guo Meimei is back to claim her name.
The Singaporean singer’s career had stalled in China, where she was mistaken for the notorious charged-with-illegal-gambling blogger Guo Meimei, to the extent that people thought that her big hit No More Panic (2005) had been performed by the Internet celebrity.
Perhaps because of that sobering experience, the singer seems more grown-up now. She still sounds sweet, but she has ditched the cutesy hits such as Mouse Loves Rice (2005) in favour of forlorn love ballads with titles including One Hundred Reasons To Be Alone and Loneliness.
She sings on Blue Sky Tears: “Don’t say, black and white, rumours are vicious/Who says, right and wrong, hearts will shatter.”
While Keep Going might be a love ballad, it contains an epiphany that she could well have gleaned from the sorry episode: “Time waits for no one/I’ll just keep going alone.”
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Extraordinary Mission
Alan Mak, Anthony Pun
The story: Lin Kai (Huang Xuan) is an undercover cop trying to get to the heart of the heroin-smuggling business. He finds his way to the ruthless Eagle (Duan Yihong), whom Lin’s handler Li Jianguo (Zu Feng) suspects is the same drug lord he had tried to bring down 10 years ago in an operation which went sour.

Tapping out messages on a mobile phone in Morse code was used to great effect in the Hong Kong crime thriller trilogy Infernal Affairs (2002-2003).
Alan Mak (co-director and co- writer) and Felix Chong (co-writer) liked the idea so much that they cribbed it for Extraordinary Mission, which Chong scripted and Mak co-directed with Anthony Pun.
But it is executed here lazily and in a throwaway manner that does not do the idea justice. At least they did not call this Infernal Affairs 4, the way director Jeffrey Lau slapped on A Chinese Odyssey Part Three (2016) to be an unworthy follow-up to a beloved series.
While it is not Infernal Affairs good, Extraordinary Mission is mostly quite engaging.
Huang (The Legend Of Mi Yue, 2015) makes for a compelling supercop who can pull off riding a motorcycle inside a building and on rooftops with panache.
The film-makers carefully weave a web of intense relationships around his character – Lin, Eagle, Li and Li’s partner Zhang Haitao, who was assumed to have perished in that botched operation.
Will Li’s sense of loyalty to Zhang lead him to put his subordinate in danger? Are Lin’s sacrifices, including getting shot up with drugs, worth it? What exactly does Eagle want?
Having set all this up, the movie then works itself into a corner and has no choice but to shoot its way out. The climactic gun battle is the kind where the vastly outnumbered good guys always find their targets while the bad guys seem to be shooting in a fog while blindfolded.
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Who Killed Cock Robin
Cheng Wei-hao
The story: Ambitious society reporter Chi (Kaiser Chuang) gets into an accident and finds out that his car was involved in another incident nine years ago – a fatal one that he had witnessed. As he digs deeper into that old case, he finds that many questions remain unanswered.

Taiwanese director Cheng Wei-hao (The Tag-Along, 2015) has a very dim view of human nature. Everyone is looking out only for himself or herself in this movie.
That can make for a darkly compelling study of morality and consequences. Too bad this is not that film.
It is too convenient how everyone and everything is so neatly connected here, from Chi’s mentor, newspaper editor Chiu (Christopher Lee), to his colleague Maggie (Hsu Wei-ning) and even the mechanic who repairs his car.
It does not help matters that director Cheng seems to be a fan of surprise revelations.
The effect of piling on twist upon twist is to have the viewer totally wrung out and exasperated by the end.
The more viewers learn about what happened nine years ago, the less things make sense, including why Chi would want to look into the cold case in the first place.
A needlessly gruesome scene thrown in for shock value in the finale serves to further sour the viewing experience.
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Goodbye Mr Loser
Adrian Teh
The story: In the present day, struggling musician Yi Bai (Ian Fang) attends the wedding of his former high-school crush Xiao Wei. He ends up drunk and makes a fool of himself in front of his wife Ah Hua (Hoon Mei Sim) and their friends. He gets a chance to do things right when he is transported back to 1999 and finds a way to become rich and famous – but at a cost. Originally a hit 2015 Chinese comedy, which was based on a 2013 play of the same name.

This is a cut-rate version of youth comedy romance You Are The Apple Of My Eye (2011), one complete with ersatz celebrities. Though to be fair, they managed to get an impersonator who can pretty much pass off as a young A-mei.
For the most part though, this feels like a cheap knock-off that never quite passes off for the real thing. The jokes are of the lame and lamer variety and the story has a whiff of the familiar about it. Indeed, the Chinese film was accused of pilfering from the 1986 American movie Peggy Sue Got Married.
At least Mediacorp actor Fang acquits himself well enough. He is committed to his role, whether that means commanding attention in a classroom with his outrageous actions or donning dreadlocks as a professional singer.
Malaysian singer-actress Hoon is quite fun as the feisty Ah Hua, but really, there is little that is fresh or surprising about how Yi Bai’s relationship with her develops.
There is one cute idea here as having travelled back in time, Yi Bai realises that all the hit songs he knows have yet to be written in 1999, a fact that he uses to his advantage.
Director Adrian Teh (The Wedding Diary, 2012) also has something to say about cherishing one’s true love, but really, you could see where this was going right from the start.
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Vampire Cleanup Department
Yan Pak Wing and Chiu Sin Hang
The story: Tim (Babyjohn Choi) is an aimless young man whose life takes a strange turn after an unexpected encounter with a vampire. He escapes unscathed despite getting bitten and finds out about the existence of a secret government unit called the Vampire Cleanup Department. But when he meets the human-like vampire Summer (Min Chen), he decides to keep her safe from annihilation.

Vampires in the West are sexy and seductive in shows such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and True Blood (2008-2014), but they are seen as either comic creatures (New Mr Vampire, 1987) or hideous ones (Rigor Mortis, 2013) in Asia.
This movie tries to have it both ways. The big baddie is an odious and immensely powerful creature while Summer is more like a cute amnesiac than an undead corpse with a mean bite.
Before long, Tim (a suitably earnest Choi) finds himself falling for a creature he is supposed to be exterminating.
While romance has been successfully worked into the likes of Buffy and True Blood, it feels like a distraction from the main event here – namely, the taking down of vampires.
A savvier tweak is imagining vampire-slaying as a government job which opens the door for jokes about bureaucracy and red-tape.
The department is thinly disguised as a cleaning squad complete with sweepers wielding brooms.
The idea sounds promising, but the execution feels a bit of a stretch, especially with the broom-sweeping moves used to take down vampires.
Unless there exists a variety of vampire which resembles litter on the ground, I am not convinced they would be of much use in actual combat.
Another point of interest here is the number of veterans in the cast. Fans of classic Hong Kong movies would be happy to see the likes of Chin Siu Ho, Richard Ng and Lo Mang in action.
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Beauty And The Beast
Bill Condon
The story: For plucking a rose for his daughter Belle (Emma Watson), Maurice (Kevin Kline) gets imprisoned in the Beast’s (Dan Stevens) castle. Belle asks to take her father’s place and finds that the castle is under an enchantment as the silverware and furniture come to life. What she does not know is that time is running out and the transformations of the castle’s residents – a one-time prince and his palace staff – are in danger of becoming permanent.

The 1991 version of Beauty And The Beast was the first animated film to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture and, in 2002, it was selected for preservation in the United States’ National Film Registry for its cultural significance. It was a major box-office hit with US$425 million in worldwide takings and is beloved by a generation of filmgoers.
In other words, this is a huge title to live up to and, despite the effort, this live-action remake never matches up to the original.
First, the good news.
Casting is one area in which this film fares quite well.
After her turn as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter wizarding films (2001-2011) and now this, Watson seems to have cornered the market on book-smart and feisty young women. And Stevens (Downton Abbey, 2010-2012) imbues the prince-turned-Beast with magnetism through his voice alone. Meanwhile, Luke Evans has fun as the vainglorious and boorish alphamale-about-town Gaston, who has his eye firmly fixed on Belle.
Some attempt has been made to tweak the problematic storyline of a female prisoner falling for a violent captor by making the Beast a tad more petulant than, well, beastly, and somewhat glossing over her loss of freedom. However, the fact remains that Belle is being held against her wishes.
The supposedly “openly gay” character controversy is just a distraction and, if not for the media coverage and threatened boycotts, you probably would have been none the wiser as to the sexual orientation of Gaston’s sidekick, LeFou (Josh Gad) .
And now we come to the musical numbers, a big reason for the success of the animated film.
Watson looks good and can carry a tune, but she cannot compare with the animated Belle, who looks and sounds like a dream, thanks to animators and the voice of Broadway actress Paige O’Hara.
Be Our Guest, the house-and-dinnerware version of the Under The Sea big ensemble number from The Little Mermaid (1989), is staged here with computer-generated imagery razzle dazzle that is meant to impress, but the animated sequence has greater charm.
Even for a minor role such as the playful young boy/teacup Chip, the animated version simply has more character.
At every turn, one is reminded of the superior 1991 film. It is hard to fully come to grips with this version, when one keeps flashing back to another movie.
Just because this is a tale as old as time does not mean it has to feel like deja vu watching it.
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Songs Of Love
Phil Lam

Loveaholic Vol. 1
C AllStar

On Phil Lam’s sixth release, there is sweetness and tenderness on ballads such as The First Breakfast and on the chart-topping Romance. The Vancouver-born, Hong Kong-based crooner is equally persuasive in English on Missing You and All I Have Is You and in Mandarin on the upbeat Do You Know.
Definition Not Found gives a lexicographical spin on the theme of loss: “Can’t find the definition for love, you’ve been cruel of late/Can’t find the definition for love, you think I’m nothing.” Stop Breeding takes a dim view of our times: “This era forces us into extinction/As we kiss with so much dread.”
On their eighth release, C AllStar offer a varied look at love as well.
Professionally Heartbroken 30 Years is the ultimate sad sack love song: “Use yesterday to divine the future, still won’t be loved next year/Wanted by no one, cared for by no one, loved by no one.”
A different kettle of fish is the cheeky Bromance: “Waiting for orders in a crisis, spurring the horse to full speed, battling with bro through the night/The way men love, only men understand, sweetness comes from silence.”
It definitely casts wuxia films in a different light.
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India has an image problem.
When I mentioned that I was going there for a holiday, the response was often, “Really?”, followed in the same breath by “Why?”, as though I had just announced that I was going on a dumpster-diving tour.
Part of it has to do with how the country has been portrayed in popular culture, from reality television game show The Amazing Race (2001 to present) to the movie Slumdog Millionaire (2008).
In a reminder of how powerful such images can be, a friend could recall the culture shock the participants felt in season 4 of The Amazing Race in 2003. They landed at Mumbai airport to an overwhelming reception of aggressive touts and later had to deal with the human crush of overcrowded Indian trains. At one point, someone was crying and exclaiming that it was all just too much to handle.
While it is exciting and exuberant, Slumdog Millionaire is also about the less savoury aspects of Indian society, such as street children getting blinded to become more effective beggars, and the deplorable conditions of slum dwelling. In one indelible scene, a child jumps into the communal toilet pit and emerges covered in human excrement.
In some of these depictions of India seen through foreign eyes, there has almost been a fetishisation of the worst aspects of its culture and society. A paper (A Content Analysis Of The Portrayal Of India In Films Produced In The West) published in The Howard Journal of Communications in 2005 makes the point that this is not new.
In a sample of 24 randomly selected films about the country produced from 1930 to 2000 in the United States or Britain, it was found that “India was consistently portrayed as backward, uncivilised, savage and traditional”.
It added that it was “common to find portrayals of dirty roads, dusty streets, unclean waters, overflowing sewers, marshy streets and spoilt food apart from the presence of garbage, depictions of noisy locales or overcrowded places (especially bazaars, trains and stations) in scenes depicting India”.
One way of getting a more balanced view of the sub-continent is to see how it depicts itself in Indian movies, from the fantasy of Bollywood musicals to the realist works of the late feted film-maker Satyajit Ray.
A more recent example would be The Lunchbox (2013), which serves up a portrait of modern India rooted in everyday life. As a housewife’s carefully prepared lunchbox makes its way to a lonely widower by mistake, via the feat of logistical wonder that is the food delivery system in Mumbai, director Ritesh Batra cooks up a moving tale about human connection and hope.
Another way is to travel to India and see the place for yourself.
There is far more to the sub-continent than can be contained in film and TV shows and even a short trip of five days proved to be eye-opening.
My itinerary packed in sprawling and beautifully decorated palace complexes in Jaipur, an impressive fortress and a massive mosque in Delhi, and that magnificent monument to love and fidelity, the Taj Mahal. Even with the guide playing up expectations, saying no one walks away disappointed, the sight of that sophisticated white-marbled feat of 17th-century architecture against the blue sky was spectacular.
Also, no small point, this – the food was delicious, with mouth-watering curries, tender tandoori meat and fish, fragrant naans and moreish snacks to devour.
Meanwhile, it is worth remembering not to gobble up everything one sees in cinemas and on TV just because it is served to us in a convenient little package.
(ST)

Sometimes The Great Yoga Sometimes Speaking In Tongues - Yoga Selects Live
Yoga Lin
Fans who missed Taiwanese singer Yoga Lin’s post-military service comeback gig at the Esplanade on Feb 3 will want to buy this release with a mouthful of a title. It is a collection of tunes from two of his tours, 2014’s Speaking In Tongues and the ongoing The Great Yoga.
Several are covers that were also performed in Singapore, including a loose-limbed take on British band Blur’s cheeky headbanger Song 2 and a persuasive version of singer-songwriter Sandee Chan’s Useless Umbrella.
There is also plenty of material here that would be new to those who were at the Esplanade concert.
He covers the late Chang Yu-sheng’s Missing You and singer-songwriter Cheer Chen’s Little Dust, leaving his distinctive personal stamp on each interpretation.
His own hits get new leases of life with different arrangements, such as the use of the vocoder to give Runaway Mama more of an electro- dance feel.
Another surprise here is the English track, Never Been In Love Before, better known as the title song off his third album, Perfect Life (2011).
One of the more compelling live albums in recent memory.
(ST)